One Cold Metal Cog
by qwanderer
Summary: It was four days in when he found a video recording of his own funeral. - Warnings: slash, angst and language. Coulson/Clint, past Coulson/Cellist


**One Cold Metal Cog**

It had been two months since Kris had left him, and Phil was starting to doubt that his feelings for her had ever had any real depth.

"You're hard to know," she had told him. "Half the time I can't tell whether you're serious about something or making some awful joke." That had been early in the conversation. It had gotten worse, later on. "Maybe you believe that you're in love with me, but I have to doubt whether you actually are, or whether you just want someone to keep around when you get sick of your job."

It had been bad, anyway. He didn't have the heart to make her stay if she was so set on leaving.

So he shut down, went to work, dealt with it the way he dealt with the end of the world on a regular basis. One lonely weekend, he sent her an email just to check in, but she didn't answer, and after that he didn't have trouble finding ways to keep busy.

To everyone else he probably seemed like his usual businesslike self, and he was forced to wonder if Kris was right about a number of the things she'd said. He'd always cared more about his job, his country, his agents. And maybe that was his place, and maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe this was just what he was built for.

And then Clint got taken by Loki.

_Damn it, I should have known something was coming, should have stopped it. We need Clint, I need Clint, and I'm the Asgardian liaison. I should have done more, dug deeper._

But he put on his business face, called Tasha to let her know, got things rolling, got the best people on this (and how he wished he could be a good man like Captain Rogers, a hero, generous hearted, missing his love 70 years later), and got on with the mission.

Phil Coulson saw himself as a tool, a cog in the machine that was SHIELD, the organization that would _damn well_ beat Loki.

Phil felt numb to all that had happened, old, dried up, used up. When Pepper had asked about Kris, he'd said, "She moved back to Portland." No word, no hint of what was behind that and how bad it had been. Later, when he spoke to Thor, he'd mentioned Jane and Loki and the Asgardian's voice had gone thick with emotion. That just wasn't him.

At least he'd been able to summon the appropriate enthusiasm for meeting Captain America. Well, maybe appropriate wasn't the word. But he really did want the signature on his card collection, old and dry as they were, like him, and real and dynamic as the signature would be, like Rogers.

They found Loki, and the team came together. Well... sort of. Not really. From where Phil was monitoring everything, he watched Stark and Rogers push each other to the brink, Romanov hurting over Barton (but using it admirably, as usual. She was a tool, too, but at least she had that passion to use), Banner approaching the edge and letting all of them know how bad of an idea it would be to push him over it.

Then everything went to hell and Loki was escaping and no one was close enough to stop him except Phil.

(Later he'd realize that Loki is a broken mirror. When a person looks at him, they both see their common weaknesses. Fury sees ruthlessness, Thor, a thirst for power, Bruce, instability, Natasha, a certain multi-layered dishonesty, and Tony, the divahood that comes with genius.)

When Phil looked at Loki, he saw a man who didn't know where all this was going or what he really wanted for himself. Loki didn't know if he was quite a person, or something else with an unchangeable nature and an inevitable fate. A cog in a machine. He didn't know his own mind, his own desires and beliefs.

"You lack conviction," Phil told Loki.

Phil didn't mind so much, the whole dying thing. It was his part in this whole disastrous operation. He told Nick to make it count, and his last thought, after the hope that they all get over themselves and save the world, was to hope that Barton would recover. His agent. His team.

Phil woke up.

His chest hurt, and Nick was there, and they won, and Clint recovered from whatever Loki did to him, but apparently there was still work Coulson was meant to do, because he wasn't dead.

Nick explained to him that everyone thought he was. Phil got handed, apologetically, eight blood-stained and signed cards. Nick explained why, and Phil asked if it was real blood, and if so, whose.

"It's yours," Fury said. He shook his head. "They did call it. I thought you were gone, Phil. You wanted me to give them a push, so I did. Still had your blood on my hands when I went looking for something that'd get to them."

His blood, and Steve Rogers's signature. How much more alive could slips of paper get.

"Figured you were more useful to me dead than alive," Nick said then, apologetically. "Had a funeral. Kris came. Seemed pretty broken up. Thought you might want to know."

Phil frowned. "How long's it been?"

"Two weeks," Nick answered. "Team came together. You pulled through. No one but me and two doctors know you're alive. I'm leaving it up to you what you want to do about that."

Phil looked at the cards in his hands. Stained brown, with that neat scrawl across them. On the one hand, his life had been messy and cutting it short had seemed so easy. On the other, starting fresh, at this point in his life, didn't really appeal either.

"Let me think about it," he told Fury, and then watched the man leave, slipping back into pain-laced sleep.

Over the next few days he spent more time awake and in need of distraction, so Nick made sure he got a Stark pad, and he spent a lot of time catching up on the media reaction to the team and the progress of the cleanup.

It was four days in when he found a video recording of his own funeral.

He had to watch it. He still hadn't come to a decision about coming back or starting over, and he thought the video might give him a push, one way or the other.

Fury spoke first, and the staid solemnity he adopted was almost comical when Phil considered that Nick had known that Phil very well might someday watch this footage. Especially when he threw in an inside joke or two.

Of course Nick was a friend, an old friend, but that didn't really factor in to his decision. He got to keep Nick either way.

Kris was crying, and she did look miserable, but she didn't make a speech, didn't even get out her cello. Phil would have liked it if she had, maybe liked it too much; maybe he didn't need to be moved into missing her right now. And it was awkward enough that she was there, in the lingering storm of their breakup, probably trying to decide how she'd felt about him and putting the memories to rest, without making him want to talk to her again, see whether they could be fixed, when really nothing had changed except perspective. He'd die for his job. That was clearer than ever now, and he wasn't sure that anyone should be subjected to loving him, if he couldn't properly return it in kind.

Kris's face may have been tear-streaked, and Pepper's too, and even Stark was unusually solemn. But it didn't really hit him that this was his funeral, that everyone thought he was dead, until he saw Clint's face.

His eyes were hollowed, his whole face blank, loose, like he couldn't be bothered to make an expression. Natasha's hand was wrapped tightly around his, as if she was afraid he would float away on the breeze or crumble apart. Phil was worried that it was Loki's doing, that Clint hadn't recovered as quickly or as completely as he'd been assured. But when Fury stepped down, Barton stepped up. His steps weren't as sure as they should have been, and every hesitation, every clumsiness in a man whose movements were always smooth and graceful, made Phil angrier at whoever or whatever had wrought this terrible change.

"I, uh," Clint began in his terribly wrong, clumsy, hesitant way. "I'm not sure what I was to Coulson. To Phil. But he was a lot of things to a lot of people, and... he's leaving us without any of that. He was always there, always knew what to do, how to get us out of trouble, how to stitch us up when we were bleeding. He was a great boss; I can't count the number of times he saved my ass but I'll always remember the first time because that was when I knew. He saved me from myself and my screwed-up life and all the things I thought I'd never escape and that was when I knew that I'd follow Phil Coulson anywhere."

Clint stopped there and his face slowly crumpled, and he hid it in his elbow until he could control it a bit again. A minute or two later, he looked up again, wiping his eyes.

"All respect to Cap, but there is _no one_ who could make me believe in a mission, believe that everything would turn out right, the way Coulson did. And he _cared._ I don't..." Clint swallowed hard before he continued. "No one's ever cared for me the way he did, like he'd give his last bit of strength to keep me safe, and he did the same for all the agents under him, for as long as I knew him. Not that he'd say it. But he would..." Clint's expression buckled again. "He would, and did, give everything for the people he knew, and I don't know how the world is going to keep turning without him. He was the best man I ever met."

Clint slumped against the podium, and Natasha came up to help him back to his seat, and Phil stopped the video, horrified.

He was the one who had done that to Clint.

He called Fury. "I'm coming back," he said, commanding and certain. "I'm coming back now. Today."

"It's your call," Fury replied, like he'd been expecting it. "But your medical treatment is not. You're not leaving base."

"Then bring me Barton and Romanov," Phil said, still not asking. "I need to see them."

"I'll see what I can do," Nick answered.

Phil spent the next several minutes contemplating the sensations in his chest, the physical ones having been joined by very similar, very non-physical ones. This hurt more than dying had, and he could no longer deny that Phil Coulson was very much alive, and also cared very much about certain people. But once you lose your innocence and stop believing in fairies, it's very hard to trust that something is real unless someone else sees it too.

Natasha entered the room first, and her face immediately went hard, angry and skeptical. But she didn't say anything, just stepped aside to make way for Clint.

Clint's face as he entered the room still had that curiously, wrongly flat quality that it had had at the funeral. And then he caught sight of Phil.

There was confusion, first, and then he turned to Fury, who had entered the room behind him. "What is this?" he asked the director. "What the hell is this?"

"I lied," Fury said unapologetically. "This is what it looks like."

Clint's hands balled into fists, but apparently he decided there were some things more important than decking the director of SHIELD at that very moment, because he turned around and looked at Phil again.

"Sir?" he said, small and uncertain, stepping hesitantly towards Phil.

"Get over here, Barton," Coulson said, steady, flat but warm, commanding.

Clint's movements smoothed out immediately, and he slid into the chair at Phil's bedside. "It's good to see you, Sir," he said, and his face was alive again, caught between smiling and anger and shock.

"Likewise," Phil replied, smiling in relief. "You're looking more like yourself, Clint. And, given that you spoke at my funeral, I think you have a right to call me Phil."

Clint's face crunched together in a blend of pain and embarrassment. "God, Phil," he said, "the subjects of eulogies are never supposed to hear them. Don't ever do that again, 'kay?"

Despite the joke, Clint's eyes were open, earnest and unguarded, and Phil could see the plea in them.

"I don't plan on making a habit out of it," Coulson reassured.

"You'd better not." Clint raised a hand as if to lay it on Phil's, then decided against it and dropped it, shifting his eyes away from Phil's face slightly, studying the equipment. "So the cellist - Kris - she was there."

"She didn't even play for me; there can't be much there," Phil joked. "But no, really. I think she made it pretty clear before she moved that that was the end, and I'm okay with that. She was right about some things."

Clint frowned. "Like what?"

"I care more about keeping my agents safe than I ever did about her," he said. "She was right about that."

Clint gave a crooked smile and looked up at Phil through his eyelashes. "Is that so?"

"Definitely," Phil answered. Then he paused. "Clint," he began. "I didn't realize how much I meant to you."

Clint's eyes narrowed a little bit in a sort of anxious evasion. "I know it's a lot," he said. "Never meant for you to hear it. It's all right if you don't... I like things how they were. Long as I've got my bow and you're in my ear, I'm happy."

"Clint," Phil said again, and this time he looked the archer straight in the eye, caught his gaze and held it. "What do you _want_ things to be like?"

Whatever magic he had that gave Clint confidence in his missions, in his movements, it must have been working, because Clint didn't hesitate before picking up Phil's hand off the bed and kissing it, sweetly and warmly, without taking his eyes off Phil's.

Phil smiled in return, small and happy and tired, and squeezed the hand that held his. "Good," he said, "because I'm starting to realize that I might want that too."

Clint beamed.

Behind Clint, Natasha gave Coulson a nod and slipped out of the room, Fury following. Not a lot more was said - Phil was happy but in pain, and drained from the events of the day, so he fell in and out of sleep, but Clint's hand on his was constant, as was his gaze, when Phil looked, drinking in the sight of what he thought he'd lost.

Phil was determined to never leave him behind again.

* * *

A/N: Two years ago, nearly to the day, my husband told me he didn't love me any more. I'm still working through that shit, and today, this popped into my head and demanded to be written. It's helped.


End file.
